


The Ship of Theseus

by robotboy



Series: The Scorpion [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Epilogue, Fix-It, M/M, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Past Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, no infinity war spoilers, not AOU compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:42:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy
Summary: An epilogue/fix-it for The God Machine.





	1. Mind

**Author's Note:**

> I sketched a lot of this out way back before Age of Ultron. So you’ll need to pretend Age of Ultron did not happen at all and ignore it completely, which is a sensible choice generally. That is to say: nothing after Iron Man 3 is strictly canon. I’m finishing it off now before Infinity War crushes whatever idea I had in my head of what could happen between these two.
> 
> This is a total fix-it fic. It’s really sad in parts, but it’s about fixing it. If you liked the cliffhanger at the end of The God Machine, I can’t say I disagree with you, but don’t read this. It’s introspective, indulgent, inconsistent, and it honestly is a follow-through on a story named for the _deus ex machina._

At first it’s electrons, spinning so fast they’re making him dizzy, in patterns making atoms that somehow hold together enough to be elements—magic, is it magic keeping them spinning?—what could it be but magic that turns those pieces into something, into someone, someone standing over him, that same spinning that keeps him planted on this rock that’s spinning around a sun that’s spinning around everything, and if you look far enough there’s more elements that are worth calling _someone_ in other parts of the universe–the universe, how far does that go, why does his hand feel like that central pivot point it’s all–

His head is what’s spinning.

‘Fuck!’ Tony gasps, and gasps again, two-oxygen—no, _air_ , just breathe, _breathe_.

Loki has moved them, which doesn’t help at all. Tony tries to get his bearings, but all the signals firing in his brain situate entire galaxies around him and trace his nervous system from skin cells in his fingertip back to his spinal column.

‘I can’t do it, _I can’t_ ,’ he chokes, and drops to his knees. Loki crouches before him, his expression amused.

‘It’s possible the human mind was not made for this,’ he admits. ‘I may have overestimated you.’

‘Oh, fuck you,’ Tony spits, shoving him away. ‘You’re not gonna dare me out of a nervous breakdown.’

‘Far be it from me to stop you,’ Loki drawls.

Tony curls his fist in the Gauntlet, fighting the flood of omniscience threatening to spill over him again. ‘Is this your plan? Pin it all on me and take the Gauntlet when it burns me up?’

‘Not at all,’ Loki presses a hand to his chest in mock-offence. ‘It’s possible the Jotun mind was not made for it either.’

‘So…’ Tony keeps shoving every errant train of thought back into the Gauntlet. ‘Why? Power?’

‘Power’s never worked in my favour,’ Loki offers a mild shrug. ‘Not like trickery. No, I’m making good on a deal. _Your_ deal, in fact.’

The Gauntlet has Tony’s blood ringing in his ears, demanding _more_. He tries to steer it, to filter through the endless data, through _infinity_ , to bring himself an answer.

‘My deal,’ he says. ‘With the Norns. Chaos.’

‘My dear Tin Man,’ Loki looks at him fondly. ‘I just wanted to wind you up and watch you go.’

And go he does.

The Gauntlet is _his_. Tony has to keep reminding himself of that, though it feels more like it’s the Gauntlet that needs reminding. It’s easy if he decides it will be: it’s like testing the suit’s thrusters at ten percent. This time he’s smashed his brain into a wall, but that’s just working out the kinks. The human mind definitely wasn’t built to handle this, but Tony is a builder. He builds solutions, and he’s got the entire universe at his disposal this time. He can fix himself.

The Gems vie for attention in his consciousness. Power roars like a car in a drag race, ready to turn each thought into an empire. Reality is one step ahead, breaking it all down into little pieces and showing him how to reconstruct it all, the big picture and the little picture at the same time. Soul scares him a little, because it’s so quiet but it burns like the heavens when Loki is around. Space keeps mapping and re-mapping his surroundings, so that the ship that Loki’s moved them to is as near or as far as he pleases from home, from anywhere: it’s an open-plan world. Time is dangerous, eager to shrink the hours lost in his head spent taming the Gems, or to spool out all eventuality and show him the heat death of the universe, then dare him like the imp of the perverse to twist backward and change it all.

Mind is the one that’s useful to start with. It hooks into Loki’s thoughts first, snagging whispers of plans and musings until Tony feels them suddenly snatched back. The Gem remembers paths through Loki’s head, slipping itself through the labyrinths and offering Tony a way to grasp it, steer it, until all the paths narrow down to squeeze him out and Loki’s hand is pulling his hair.

‘Don’t.’

That’s what first snaps Tony out of the Gauntlet’s thrall. He blinks, dazzled by the ship’s lights. Loki is standing over him, hand tight enough in his hair to sting, glaring at him.

‘You’re using the Mind Gem on me.’

‘It… wants to?’ Tony answers, his voice rough from lack of uses. It’s all he can do to explain the way they’re pulling him every which way, demanding to show off their tricks, to punch a hole in the world.

‘It would,’ Loki releases Tony’s head roughly, and it thumps against the back of his seat. ‘If you try to get into my head, Tony, I will never let you out again.’

‘Sorry,’ Tony says.

‘You need more time?’ Loki asks. Tony takes a deep breath, and looks around him. He’s been aware, mostly through the Space Gem, that they’re on a spaceship. Now he looks at it, it’s more like a moving penthouse. Days have passed since Loki settled them here, idly minding Tony while he works to control the Gauntlet. Even then, Time is offering to stitch it up, erase that inconvenient loss of hours, but he’s painfully thirsty and he just wants it to be _now_.

‘I need something to drink,’ he croaks. Loki’s thumb brushes over his cheek, affectionate, and he walks away to fetch one.

Tony leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His bones feel creaky, even with Power boosting energy through him. He examines the Gauntlet, splaying his fingers and twisting his arm. It’s snug against his skin, the seamlessness surprising him. He’s worn his suit’s gauntlets often enough that it doesn’t feel strange. It was so simple to make, and he knows it belongs on his hand. It’s just a matter of beta testing. There are bugs to work out.

Loki sets a pair of bottles before them, pulling up a chair near Tony’s. Tony downs it in two gulps, and is surprised that it’s water. Asgardian water, when Reality breaks it down for him. That’s interesting, Tony muses, but it’s still too much to think about.

That’s when Mind does the second thing, the useful one. Tony reaches for it, and it begins latching into him. It’s like a virus, finding the gaps and the connections and drilling into them. Where Loki’s mind was a maze, Tony’s is a hard drive. He steers it himself, showing the Gem how to tidy things up; to defragment; to streamline the energy and reinforce the channels.

‘What are you doing?’ Loki demands, leaning forward. His face is drawn and wary. His gaze is set on Tony.

‘Fixing things,’ Tony uses as a reply. ‘Something wrong?’

‘Your eyes,’ Loki says. ‘Are you using the Mind Gem on _yourself_?’

‘It’s working,’ Tony tells him. Loki’s right, his eyes have turned blue, but on the plus side he’s dampened the omniscience enough that he has to check before realising.

He concentrates. Power and Reality are waiting, and he coaxes them into fixing his eyes. The Mind Gem dissolves into his thoughts. Simple.

‘I’m wrapping my head around it,’ Tony explains, and it all feels smoother. The Gauntlet is ready for him, and he’s ready for the Gauntlet. 


	2. Reality

It all makes much more sense, now his head is in order.

The Gems are no longer fighting for his attention—or his whole consciousness—but priming themselves for the moment they’re called upon. Tony ignores them for a while, as he settles into the ship. Compared to the cave and the cabin, he’s much more at home here. The differences between one luxury apartment and another are superficial, galaxy-wide.

Loki gives him space, but never enough space to stew. It’s easy to put Earth out of his mind: it’s easy now to do anything with his mind. There are five Gems visible in the Gauntlet now, the sixth appearing like a trick of the light. Like the memory of where it was, before Tony put it to work. If it’s the price of being able to control the Gauntlet without going crazy, he’s not complaining.

‘So what are we doing?’ he asks Loki, when they’re floating in the direction of Knowhere. ‘Is this it, bad guys win, we take a holiday?’

‘It’s what’s generally done,’ Loki says, even as he chews the inside of his lip.

‘That’s you and me, guys who do what’s generally done,’ Tony retorts. ‘You’re bored. I don’t need to get in your head to know that. Didn't you say we’d have some fun?’

Loki nods thoughtfully. ‘There were expressions of interest. We could do some good business,out here.’

‘Sell five fakes and keep the real one? Start an interstellar arms race?’

‘That was the plan, wasn’t it?’ Loki has that playful twist to his mouth.

A drink to their plan later, Tony is tumbling into Loki’s bed again. Loki rips Tony’s shirt to pieces around the Gauntlet, which Tony doesn’t dare remove. Loki still fucks like a god.

They never sleep a whole night together. Even in space, where daytime is just a matter of turning the lights on. Tony kisses the freckles on Loki’s shoulder and crawls out from the tangled sheets. Loki looks beautiful, like ivory carved into a weapon, even when he sleeps.

Luxury spaceships don’t come standard with workshops. But when you have a stone that controls reality sitting on your knuckle, it doesn’t really matter. A handle meets the Gauntlet when he reaches for the wall, and a door opens when he pushes. The room forms around him, and he wonders if either he or Loki could confidently say tomorrow that there _hadn’t_ been a workshop there before.

Tony starts to tinker. It’s what he’s always done when he hasn’t known what to do. The Gauntlet is flexible enough that he can work comfortably in it, but he oils the hinges anyway, and attaches touch sensors to the fingertips. He tests for motion and flexibility, making sure it stays snug and comfortable around his wrist. Easier to wear all the time. He’s not sure what would happen to him if he tried to take it off.

So, the next night, a cloak. Their clients mustn't see he’s got one of his own. He builds a disguise so good he can’t tell it’s not his naked hand. The bitten fingernails, the lines of his palm, the tendons in his wrist, all there. It even feels like skin to the touch: warm, a little rough. He wakes Loki that morning with touches that tickle all down his spine, and Loki doesn’t even ask until after breakfast where the Gauntlet went.

On the third night, he works on security. An enemy can’t break his arm to remove it if his radius is made of a vibranium alloy. The Gem lets him shuffle atoms around as easy as changing tyres. He knits his skin a little stronger. Then the other arm. Then it might as well be everything, from skin to bones, better organs. He’s full of wetware upgrades after a week. His joints feel better than they have in a decade, his muscles spring in a way Loki is very appreciative of. His eyes are sharp enough to work without goggles. He cleans the last of the palladium out of his blood.

Everything is tweaked and twiddled. He knows Loki is noticing the changes. There’s a flicker beside his ear that resembles an HUD. Sometimes the muscle of his calf has a metallic sheen to it. His palms glow a faint blue, like the ghost of an arc reactor in his chest. That, he doesn’t change. The Reality Gem tells him it’s there, even when he can’t seem to ever look at and touch it simultaneously. He closes his 20-20 eyes and there’s a Gauntlet on his hand and an engine in his heart. His heart, which runs at precisely 70bpm. His lungs forget he ever used to smoke. His liver forgets _everything_ he ever did to it. And this is the best thing that’s ever happened to his dick.

He's perfect for the suit. He designs one that he can never be parted from, that lives inside him, dormant in the hollows of his new bones. When called, it trickles from nodes along his limbs, torso, spine, and temples, an oozing gold fluid that wraps him in a second skin. Red unfolds from it, membranes forming the plates of his armour in perfect shape. He is Iron Man, and Tony, and Iron Man.

The thing is, he’s never been very good at the difference between machines and people. He’s never been very sure about how much of him _isn’t_ Iron Man. The difference doesn’t really matter when both are real, and Reality belongs to him.

He’d always heard an engine thrumming in his heart, found grease between his fingers. It didn’t matter, not really. He always knew what he was. He always liked to fix things. To tinker. He liked it a lot better than who he used to be.


	3. Power

Villains are villains. They like to think they’re unique, but Tony always found his clients blurred together after a while. Out here, they come in green, purple, pink, anywhere between three and ten feet tall. They’re still the same tough-talking idiots in bad suits Tony always dealt with.

He and Loki hop from planet to planet, being wined, dined, and courted by different brokers. The footage of the Asgardian vault heist has got around, and so have rumours about things going missing from Faltine, Niðavellir, Thanos’ neck—and the entire Negative Zone. The possibility of Gems crackles in the air as they negotiate. Loki talks sweet and Tony talks business. They deal in currency, not because they need it—what need have they for anything when Tony can make everything?—but for verisimilitude. And for fun.

So they broker in other things. Blueprints for a time machine. The deed to a black hole. A crown whose wearer becomes the King of Fear. A puzzle box Loki can’t keep his eyes off.

What they really take is always the same: power. With five Gauntlets in circulation, and the hint of Infinity Gems to follow, there’s no sense letting someone get too dangerous. Loki and Tony agree upon it before they begin to swindle the galaxy: take what matters. Keep the squabbles petty, and never tip the scales too far. Chaos requires at least a little order.

They run the game for weeks at a time. Tony still has his own Gauntlet, sealed invisibly around his hand. Mind and Reality are busy keeping him alive, but Power—Power _roars_ in his veins as he gets drunk on it, as he leverages it, as it amasses around Loki and himself.

It’s beautiful.

They sell the fifth Gauntlet for a higher price than the others combined. Their client leaves them with all the appropriate threats should their deal turn sour. Loki snickers the moment she closes the door to their suite, pouring celebratory glasses of some outrageously strong and even-more-outrageously expensive liqueur they’d opened over the deal.

‘To us,’ Tony toasts, taking the glass Loki offers and clinking it.

‘To chaos,’ Loki agrees.

_To power_ , he doesn’t say, but the gleam in Loki’s eye says it back.

He’s barely swallowed when Loki knocks the glass out of his hand, and Tony lets it smash on the floor as Loki’s mouth collides into his. He grabs a fistful of Loki’s hair in one hand and his shirt in the other. Their teeth clash and there’s a tang of blood cutting the sweetness of liqueur when Loki bites his lip. Tony’s buttons ping on the floor, and Loki’s leather groans.

Loki steers him onto the couch and kneels between his legs. His pants are so tight they need to be peeled off, Loki prising them over the nodes in Tony’s thighs. The fluid undersuit trickles out, chasing after Loki’s fingers. When Loki’s lips slide over Tony’s cock, the gold rises like a tide to meet him. Loki eases it back with finger and thumb, sucking Tony’s cock while the suit forms around Tony’s hips.

Loki and the suit are Tony’s two favourite things to have on his naked body.

‘That’s it,’ Tony whispers to both of them, fingers tracing metal-and-skin along Loki’s cheekbone, feeling out where he fits in hollowed cheeks. Loki growls and twists his head, bathing in the attention. His lashes flutter as a fleck of gold clings to his cheek. It trails between them like honey, the suit beginning to lick Loki’s skin as fondly as it does Tony’s. Loki crawls sinuously over Tony, and when he sinks down onto Tony’s cock, the sheen falls over both of them because they are, they did it, they’re golden.

Loki always looked like a prize. He rides Tony as slippery as a snake, right down to the shimmering scale creeping over him. Tony is warm all over, and his nerve endings extend across both of them now, while his vision narrows into the slits of the visor and his hips pump like pistons. Loki always gives as good as he gets, smooth and sleek when Tony jerks, undulating with every mechanical thrust. What Tony did to deserve this—a lot of things, he knows—might as well make Loki the spoils of war. Loki did a number on him, the target and the price and the reward, and for the way they drive each other breathless and come and keep going and attempt to bruise hips that never bruise, Tony is afraid he’d do it all again.

The undersuit has covered him from scalp to toes, and something similar has slicked over Loki, a viscous dark metal that clings to the sharp lines of him. Ivory gives way to gold, not a weapon but a trophy. As it creeps between Loki’s lips he gasps, and for a moment he goes still.

That’s what Power feels like, Tony realises. It thrums like when he first found it, holding a god of chaos still for a moment, plated and shining and Tony’s.

The visor retracts and Tony looks, really looks. It’s so hard to watch Loki without being seen. To have Loki for a moment, vulnerable and willing, is worth slowing down Time for. He wonders if Loki would even notice, with how time must pass for him.

Tony laughs to himself. It’s not like dog-years, he knows, but he also knows the Asgardians live for millennia and Jotun for longer than that. Loki begged him once for a moment, a careless morning before they stole the Reality Gem and became the destroyers of worlds. What was a morning worth, when you have a few million? Were the last six months a one-night stand to Loki, and Tony as easy to throw away at the end as Tony’s own past affairs?

_I must look so small to you_ , he’d said. Loki was afraid, then, inasmuch as he’d ever admit. Afraid to lose Tony: would that be worth handing over the Gauntlet’s power for? For this, life in the lap of luxury wreaking havoc across the galaxy, for a promise that they could live forever? Tony doesn’t have to be small anymore. Loki doesn’t have to be afraid. Now that he’s replaced the worn-down pieces of himself, a lifetime can mean what he wants it to.

Tony is made up of moving parts, and Loki is still.


	4. Time

Slipping out of Time feels a lot like controlling an empty suit. He leaves Tony, the one coated in gold and drunk and fucking Loki silly, and the Time Gem pulls him forward.

Time isn’t a line, exactly, but it isn’t nearly as complicated as quantum physics claimed, either. He takes a breath, then two, outside temporality. Loki is still, back in the moment Tony left him. Forward, he can see how Loki moves as quickly as he does but forever, for so long, longer than Tony’s mind-before-the-Gauntlet could have comprehended. A year, a decade, a century—Loki moves always, through what-was-the-future, never in one place for long. They won’t stay together: neither have any illusions that this is a great love story. But they meet again, and again, never for long enough to get bored with each other. Loki had only seemed still to Tony, who’d be lucky to make fifty years. Tony only seemed small to Loki, a mayfly romance. But that was Tony before Infinity.

He’d never considered outliving Loki. He’d never considered outliving anyone, really. Time folds in on itself like the puzzle box he bought for Loki, as he turns the idea over in his head.

‘Tony Stark!’

He startles. It’s Loki’s voice, raw and desperate. But when?

‘ _Please_ ,’ the word is broken into syllables over Loki’s shuddering breath.

When did he leave Loki? Not on a couch, shining and smug and riding Tony without a care in the world. Some other time, he’d just had it at his fingertips as he thought about outliving—there, Loki calling out to him from three thousand years later. But not later at all, when Tony can follow the voice through Time and make it _now_.

Loki is on his knees. Clouds of dust surround them, the rubble of some building crumbling apart. A city falling into a marsh, a battlefield in between.

There’s a body in Loki’s lap. Loki doesn’t look up from it as Tony approaches. He’s curled around it, hands grasping broad shoulders, white hair, a heavy jaw. Baby-blue eyes too wide, too blank. Tony’s breath catches.

Thor is dead.

A howl rips itself from Loki’s throat. He arches protectively around Thor. Tony has seen Loki cry before, but nothing like this. This is ugly, open grief. His eyes are red, nose running, lips trembling. His hands are bloody, but the wounds in Thor’s chest aren't Loki's style. They make the shape of fangs, the mouth of something great and terrible that blocks out the light when Tony tries to search for the battle that led to this.

Loki looks older. More gaunt than he was before, crow’s feet deeper around his eyes, silver stripes shot through his hair.

‘Fix it,’ is all he says.

‘What?’ Tony’s voice comes out quieter than he expects. The way Loki touches Thor, magic flickering uselessly from his fingertips, makes Tony believe Thor might react. Thor should react. Thor was always brimming with life, when he was Tony’s friend. The biggest, the brightest thing in the room. But all that moves on him is blood, too much of it pooling around them, a terrible imitation of his cape.

‘You fix things,’ Loki hisses. ‘That’s what you do.’

‘I don’t... I can’t...’ Tony has no idea what to do. The Gauntlet has nothing. Only Time, holding him here. Holding fast to to the absolute and inevitable truth, that Thor would always die here, has already died here. Tony glances forward, backward, down every path in fate he can see, and Time will only light the way back to this. A plan so fixed that all deviations result in one eventuality.

‘I once gave you the power of Infinity,’ Loki speaks in a monotone. ‘I called you now and you came. You can change it.’

‘I would,’ Tony insists, and he feels panic bubbling in him. Because the more he looks for an alternative, the more he can see somewhere in time, Thor dies, Pepper and Rhodey and Steve died a millennium ago, and a long time after any of the others, in the brittle and lonesome years of a Frost Giant, there is Loki’s death. Tony cannot find his own at all.

‘It doesn’t... it doesn’t work this way,’ Tony tells him honestly. ‘I can’t change it. I can just see it.’

‘Please,’ Loki says again. He isn’t looking at Tony any more, as though the whole world is him and Thor. His voice is so soft Tony barely hears it. ‘I don’t know how to be without him.’

Tony thinks his heart breaks, a motor sputtering at the realisation that this greying and haggard Loki has half a lifetime left without Thor. And no matter what Tony was to Loki once, he knows that Thor and Loki grew around one another like vines. To cut one down will kill the other, and all Tony can do is tell Loki how many thousand years that will take.

That’s what Infinity means.

He turns away. This isn’t what Time should be.

The dust and rubble around him hang as heavy as fog, and in nine steps he cannot see the tableau of Thor and Loki over his shoulder.

He knows this place. He knows what to do.

‘We had a deal!’ he calls out.

Once he has spoken, the three women stand in the mist. Like Thor’s death, always and already there.

‘We had a _wager_ ,’ the Norn corrects him. How long since they last spoke? He and Loki might just be leaving through the mist, joking about  _The Wizard of Oz_. Thor might still be dying, have been dying when they first came, here where everything is now.

Tony holds up his fist, brandishing the Time Gem. ‘We said chaos. If it’s all written in stone, if Thor _has_ to die, today, here… then fate exists. So what good is controlling Time?’

‘You were the frog who made a pact with the scorpion,’ the Norn warns him. ‘Not us.’

Tony remembers the fable: Jarvis, the real Jarvis, read it to him when he was little. With the Time Gem in his hand, he can easily hear the warm, English voice and the creaking pages of a picture-book, and he realises he’d forgotten Jarvis' fresh-laundry smell. The story goes: a scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river, but the frog is afraid the scorpion will sting him. _If I were to sting you, we would both drown_ , the scorpion assures him. _So I promise I will not_. The frog agrees, but in the deepest part of the river, the scorpion breaks his promise and stings the frog. As they plunge into the water together, the frog ask:s _Why did you sting me, if both of us will die?_   The scorpion can only answer: _I_ _t is my nature_. _I am a scorpion._

‘What good is a God of Mischief, if he is always bound to do mischief?’ another Norn asks, drawing him back to this moment. She sounds younger when she speaks. ‘A promise of chaos is not chaos at all.’

‘But if we can’t change fate, if it’s all inevitable, there’s no possibility for chaos, is there?’ Tony demands. ‘There isn’t even _choice_.’

‘So, do you forfeit?’ asks the third Norn. She’s older than the others. Older than all of it.

‘This was never a fair bet. You fixed the dice.’

The Gauntlet makes a _ping_ sound, and Tony twists his hand. In the indent where the Time Gem rested, there’s a familiar pebble with a bracket painted on it.

‘Have it back, then,’ the eldest says. ‘The privilege of uncertainty.’

The younger Norn takes the pebble. ‘Is it worth it? Thor may die anyway.’

‘I’ll take _may_ over _will_ any day of the week,’ Tony says.

As Time is snatched away from him, the future crumbles into fog. Everything falls apart. It’s all going to shit, Tony realises. He wasn’t made for this: he wasn’t _remade_ for this. He’s compromised four Gems fucking it up. He desperately fumbles for the rim of the Gauntlet, but he sealed it so perfectly, and his nails begin to sting as he tries to find where he ends and the Gauntlet begins.

It’s too much. He’s not enough. He needs a drink. He’d give anything to disappear into a bottle, to get lost at the bottom of a glass. He'd kill for a whiskey right now.


	5. Space

This is all wrong. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He's too small for all of this.

And once he thinks that, it’s so easy to shrink away. To get lost. To disappear from everyone, from the expectations, from the consequences, from the power he can’t do anything good with. It’s what he’s done his whole life.

He plunges into amber and it surrounds him. He’s submerged in whiskey lactones, phenols, aldehydes, esters, diacetyl. Nothing but him and the bright gold welcome of a drink, just for now. Just for a moment. Just until he’s better.

All the way down here, molecules become atoms. When he breaks them down and he knows the alchemy of alcohol: whatever it is, it has 79 protons because it’s all made of gold.

And he’s sinking.

Sinking.

He never hits the bottom. That was always the problem, wasn’t it?

It gets real honest down here. And real hard to breathe.

Drowning.

You were always drowning.

You might dream you became a machine, but you died in the dark.

_No_ , he tries to call out, but his voice is too small. _I’m sorry_. Liquid fills his mouth. So many people, here at the bottom of the glass, he’d say sorry to. _Pepper_. She’d know, but it doesn’t mean he’ll change. He always ends up here. _Rhodey_. Rhodey never really believed it, but he always forgave Tony anyway. _Bruce_. But Bruce, that last moment he looked at Tony, didn’t really seem to blame him for what happened. For Tony killing him. Tony says it anyway, even as the amber swallows the sound, even if nobody can hear him.

He feels sick. He hasn’t felt sick since the upgrades. But there’s only two Gems now, the Space Gem struggling to follow him as he collapses smaller and smaller. The Gauntlet constricts around his wrist, and his heart beats faster as he still can’t get under the cuff. It’s tight, too tight, and only as he feels skin turns clammy inside does it give him enough purchase to yank the rim. It hardly budges, his bones crunching as he tries to wriggle his wrist out.

_Please_ , he wants to tell it. _Please, I don’t want this any more. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be this, I just want—_


	6. Soul

_I want to go home_.

It’s a sentence he’s said very seldom in his life. Partly because he’s not really sure what it means. As Space releases him, the world around him reshapes itself into something familiar. It’s like a song he knows as it plays but can’t name: he hasn’t had a memory elude him like that since the Gauntlet fixed his mind. The song is—the song is New York. He feels he should have known that, but he didn’t. New York is home.

And Steve is here.

It’s New York, but it’s all wrong. In the corner of his eye, the buildings are stretching, shimmering, their brownstone façades rippling with smooth glass. He tries to focus on them as they warp the sunlight, but Steve cups a hand over his eyes and brings his thoughts back down to street level.

‘Don’t think about it too hard.’

‘Is this real?’

‘You’re the one who can control reality. You tell me,’ Steve raises an eyebrow.

‘It’s not… it’s not like that,’ Tony flexes the Gauntlet. It’s almost empty now. The Soul Gem glitters at them. ‘It’s different. Is this a fucking spirit journey? Are you the Steve I see in my head?’

Steve laughs. ‘Of course not. The Steve Rogers in your head is perfect. That was the problem, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh, that’s what it was?’ Tony snaps.

‘Think about it, Tony. You invented a fake that was better than the real one.’

They pass Central Park, and Tony stops to stare. It’s as dense as a forest, filled with black trees. Figures shift between them, creeping in and out of sight. One steps out, and Tony startles when he sees its SS uniform. He’s about to grab Steve when a gunshot rings, and the soldier crumples. Tony’s head whips up in time to catch Bucky, impossibly tall and shrouded in darkness, shouldering his rifle and sprinting off.

Steve gives Bucky a wistful glance, but continues to walk Tony up Park Avenue.

‘You’re not going after him?’

‘He’ll come back,’ there’s sadness in Steve's voice. ‘When he’s ready.’

‘This isn’t in _my_ head, is it?’ Tony stops walking. ‘All this around us. It’s yours. This is _your_ New York.’

‘I hoped you’d get your head out of your ass long enough to notice,’ Steve smirks. ‘Now that we've cleared that up, I want to show you something.’

He swings his shield around and holds the star up to Tony’s face. ‘Tell me what you see.’

Tony's face is reflected in the gleam. He looks like hell, but he looks human. He hasn't checked in a while. ‘Me?’

‘You. You’re not Howard. You’re not anyone else,’ Steve prompts. ‘Because you’re _not_ , while we're in my head. Not to me.’

‘But…’ Tony can’t say it right. The question he always wanted to ask Steve. ‘Why me?’

Steve squeezes his arm. ‘You never could do it, could you? Understand why we worked, and then why we didn't. You never believed I could made mistakes. You got so worried about why Captain America loved you that you couldn’t see why Steve did.’

They’re at the mansion. Steve stops at the gate and takes Tony by his shoulders.

‘You, the futurist, always looking forward to tomorrow,’ Steve explains. ‘You brought back what I needed more than anything. You made me _hope_.’

He smiles, and it’s _that_ smile, the one Tony has known his whole life, and he realises it’s torn at the edges, where the paper ripped.

‘You and me, we’ll always dream of how to make the world better. It just doesn’t have to be perfect.’

Tony opens the gate, and Steve’s New York is left behind. He steps onto the lawn, the one he destroyed. It’s trimmed, and has gentle ruts running through it from a child’s bicycle. He stops at the front door, heart racing.

No, that’s not right. The RPM should be regular; the reactor should be stabilised. That leak was fixed, all connections reinforced. His heart pays no attention to that, and keeps thundering.

Clicking the door open, his eyes follow the patterns of the marble floor to the lounge. He can’t look up at this man. He can’t.

There’s no machine in the world that can fix this.

‘Dad?’

‘Not quite,’ the voice answers. ‘But I do appreciate the sentiment.’

Tony rushes forward, and for a moment he thinks that the dream-world will shrink him to child-size, or make him run right through a hologram, but no. Edwin Jarvis is warm and solid when Tony collides with him, his shirt smelling of fresh laundry where Tony’s face presses into it.

‘Let me look at you,’ Jarvis says. His voice has that tinny, digitised tone. He’s young, maybe younger than Tony could remember him. His eyes flash electric blue.

Tony’s beard is salt-and-pepper; his eyes are worn at the corners; he’s getting ropy under muscle; there are scars around the reactor and the cuff of the Gauntlet. But there’s blood in his veins and marrow in his bones, and that makes Jarvis smile.

‘I’ve fucked up, Jarvis,’ Tony says, and he’s crying. Cramps grip his wrist and his fingers are aching inside the Gauntlet.

‘You remade a man as a machine,’ Jarvis tells him.

‘I could never remake you, though,’ Tony shakes his head.

‘But you did,’ Jarvis smiles. ‘And you haven’t done too badly.’

‘But it’s _you_ ,’ Tony stumbles back into a chair. He thumbs the edge of the Gauntlet, but it’s fixed tight. ‘I’m… I’m missing something. Something I couldn’t give you.’

He can break it all down into protons and electrons, actions and reactions, he can rewire his own heart and he can remake the universe, and something is _missing_.

‘I have to fix it.’

He feels a bump against his leg. A not-quite-face looks up at him. U whirs and cocks its head.

‘Hey,’ Tony says softly. He pets it.

‘You never fixed these two,’ Jarvis herds DUM-E over, crouching down in front of Tony.

‘They never needed to be _fixed_ ,’ Tony cups DUM-E’s neck, protective.

‘Then I think you know what’s missing,’ Jarvis says, in that same way he used to help Tony with his English homework, and for years, long after he died, remind him to get some sleep.

Tony holds up the Gauntlet. There’s one Gem left. He pries it from its place, rolling it in his palm. U and DUM-E watch, curious.

He gives the Soul to Jarvis.

‘You always had one, you know,’ he says.

Jarvis closes his hand around the Gem and gives Tony an odd smile. ‘And so did you.’

Tony shakes his head. ‘I just wanted to fix cars.’

‘Well,’ Jarvis shrugs. ‘We all start somewhere.’

Tony gets it now. He stands, blinking through the pain of the tightening Gauntlet, and he thinks he gets it.

He walks out, and the mansion starts to collapse behind him. Smoke billows across the sky and bodies pile up in the dirt. 

He pries his fingers into the Gauntlet’s rim. It clenches, making his blood throb, but he wriggles around until he finds the seam. The metal joints begin to stiffen, bending back and threatening to dislocate his fingers.

‘I built you,’ he tells it. ‘I can destroy you.’

The hinges fuse as he digs into them. The blood under his nails makes it slippery work, and the Gauntlet is starting to overheat. Tony roars and the metal screeches, warping out of his grip. He rips it from his skin, and the golden pieces are dull by the time they hit the mud.

Maybe he really wasn’t made for any of this. Maybe when it all happened, Tony broke down, and Loki turned tail, because he’s a scorpion. Maybe Thor will find Loki. Maybe Steve manages to revive Bruce, and the Hulk flattens the remaining agents. Maybe Bucky doubts for long enough not to execute Tony. Maybe the Gauntlet was just a trick. Maybe it’s all going to be chaos again.

He can fix this. He might not be a hero, but he's a mechanic. 


End file.
